Teaching Situation and Rationale
I teach at East Central High School in Tulsa, Oklahoma, which is a large inner-city high school in the Tulsa Public School District with approximately 1100 students in 9 th-12 th grades. It is one of the most diverse high schools in the state, with Hispanic students constituting the largest ethnic group. 47.7% of students are Hispanic, with a significant proportion classified as English Language Learners; 22.34% are African American; 15.57% are White; 7.69% are Native American; 4.30 are Asian; .09% are Pacific Islander; and 2.29% identify themselves as Multiracial. 16.2% qualify for Special Education services and 92.77% qualify for the free and reduced lunch program based on their parent's income. The average ACT score for 2011-12 was below the state average at 17.1%, as was the 55% of students passing the English II End of Instruction Exam (one of the high-stakes tests students must pass in order to graduate). I will teach this unit to three different sections of 11 th grade Advanced Placement and Composition students. At East Central we have an open enrollment policy, so my AP Language classes are composed of diverse groups of students of varying levels of ability, several of whom are English Language Learners. While some of my students are reading at or above grade level and are comfortable with the process of interpreting literature, others are reading below grade level and have a more limited vocabulary; several students will never have had an AP English class before, so analyzing literature will be a new skill for them. Our classes are structured on a 7 period schedule; classes meet every day for 50 minutes, which allows me to reinforce concepts daily and incorporate many different hands-on and project-based activities, giving students a variety of ways to learn the material and demonstrate their understanding.
Many of my students (especially ones who are new to the AP program) become easily frustrated with works that are more challenging to read and are set in a time period or location they are unfamiliar with (such as Heart of Darkness). My ELL students are usually quite motivated because they've self-selected a more advanced course, but they often struggle with the vocabulary and syntax and even keeping up with the storyline because of inadequate background knowledge. When encountering these works, sometimes students give up before we've even begun because they feel so intimidated by the reading or disconnected from the work. I want to help students connect with the reading in a way that makes it more engaging for them by giving them small inroads that help them identify with the author, characters and themes before we begin reading the text. My goal is to model the process of interpretation by starting with related works that are more accessible to them before we jump into the story itself. This approach will work for Heart of Darkness if we start with a simplified graphic novel version of the story, as well as the song "3AM" by Eminem, which deals with the same theme of a descent into evil and madness.
Heart of Darkness is a complex work that lends itself to rich interpretation of character and theme. I believe this book is interesting and useful to read and teach because it will enable student-readers to come to certain understandings of and conclusions about the nature of evil, how the character of Kurtz illustrates that theme, and how that theme reveals a condition present in all human beings. For example, Kurtz is represented as a powerful man who was once revered and respected, which can lead one to believe that evil is conditioned through experiences, as illustrated through Kurtz's process of "going native". My students can make personal connections to the novella by examining Marlow and Conrad as outsiders, since many of my students are immigrants and will be able to relate to Conrad's background as an immigrant as well as Marlow's experience of seeing the Congo as an outsider. This makes the text a good choice for them because it will increase their engagement with it as well as their interest in reading.
In addition, Heart of Darkness is a work that lends itself to varying interpretations which can lead to rich student discussion and facilitate higher-order thinking. With the use of certain strategies with the text, such as essential questions and guided graded discussion, students can come to certain understandings about the nature of evil. It is a text with which it is easy to guide students to discussion of questions that promote higher level thinking, such as the previously listed essential questions. Some teachers feel that it is better to stick to lower order thinking tasks for students who are sometimes lower achieving (such as special education and ELL students), because they think lower-achieving students are frustrated by higher-level thinking activities and unable to perform the tasks. However, studies by Zohar and Dori found that lower-achieving students made as much or more progress academically than their higher-achieving peers when given tasks that involved higher-order thinking. 1 Therefore, these strategies that guide students to higher-order thinking about characters and themes in Heart of Darkness will be appropriate and beneficial to all my students, regardless of their academic level when they enter my class. Heart of Darkness is also a work that is included on AP reading lists, so studying it will help my students prepare for the AP English exams by exposing them to universal themes. Having thought about these themes will help them when they are asked to draw connections between works.
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